Glitz and Glamour for Sistine Chapel
ROME — The music swelled, heavenly clouds began to fade and bright rays of light began to cut through the theater. And then it stopped. The spectacle’s artistic director, Marco Balich, waited patiently. “What’s going on?” he asked his creative producer.
“Power outage,” responded the producer, Stefania Opipari. Later, she explained that it was the first time that all of the lasers, projectors and special effects of the multimedia production, “Universal Judgment: Michelangelo and the Secrets of the Sistine Chapel,” had been turned on at the same time. “We fixed it,” she said.
The debut of “Universal Judgment” was days away, but if Mr. Balich, who is also the show’s producer, was nervous, you’d never have known it. He has a lot at stake on the production, which opened on March 15. He has booked the capital’s former symphony hall for at least a year. If it’s successful, it would become Rome’s first permanent theatrical production.
The Vatican approved the project, on the condition that it would respect the artistic, religious and spiritual values that the Sistine Chapel embodies. The Vatican Museums, which house the Sistine Chapel, provided high- definition digital reproductions of the frescoes in the hall at a reduced rate because they acknowledged the educational value of the project. Mr. Balich had to create something that will enchant Romans (who, surrounded by beauty, are reluctant to pay for it), tourists, cardinals and teenagers. He’s got a private investment of 9 million euros, or around $11 million, and years of planning riding on it.
Mr. Balich also has to convince Italy’s traditionally skeptical art conservators that he’s not out to circumvent visits to the real chapel with a glitzy concoction that includes theater, ballet and many, many frills. “Italy has all these very conservative art critics,” he said.
“When they say, ‘Oh but we don’t want to make a Disney kind of thing,’ I say, ‘But Disney was a genius — what’s wrong with that?’ ” Mr. Balich added.
One of Italy’s most respected cultural critics, Tomaso Montanari, described the over-the-top effects as “visual Viagra,” wondering outright whether they were “more of a mirror of the present than a means to better understand the past.”
The musical merger between the Vatican Museums, the keepers of one of the greatest artistic troves of humanity, and Mr. Balich, best known as the designer of over-the-top spectacles — among them the closing ceremony of the Sochi Olympics in 2014, both ceremonies for the Turin Games in 2006 and the 550th anniversary celebration of Kazakhstan — wasn’t an obvious match.
Pope Francis is known for his casual style, but the Vatican is not accustomed to sharing top billing with Sting, who wrote the main theme of the show, as they do on the playbill. But Mr. Balich believes that his past experience with the Olympics played in his favor. “The Vatican understood that our work is always celebrating values,” he said.
Mr. Balich said he wanted “to put the grammar of the big Olympics at the service of the Sistine Chapel, which is one of the milestones of humanity.”
The hourlong performance does not seek to evangelize, Mr. Balich said. Instead, the production is more like a meditation on Michelangelo’s relationship with his creation, and on creation in general. “It’s about capturing the spirit between the artist and his masterpiece,” said Lulu Helbek, the co- director of the show.
Fotis Nikolaou, the show’s choreographer, added, “It’s like saying thank you to a masterpiece like the Sistine Chapel.”